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Paper Workshop Announcement: STS and Democracy

Politics has been conceptualized in incredibly broad terms in STS (Brown 2015). At the same time, the more specific question of democratic politics has often been left under-explored, allowing notions such as public participation to be imported as “off the shelf” ideals in STS (Marres 2012:ix). In this workshop, we ask what it would mean to work with democracy not as an implicit repository of ideals, but as an explicit object of study in STS. We ask how democratic politics can be understood and studied based on the practice-oriented empirical commitments and conceptual repertoires of STS. Such an effort might require a redescription of democratic political institutions and concepts, paying close attention to the situated practices and entanglements that their operations require. Despite a number of notable contributions in recent years, we believe that the vast majority of the work on what STS has to offer democracy is yet to be done.

Format

The purpose of the workshop is to invite 10-20 scholars to meet and improve their individual chapter contributions through mutual discussion. Abstracts are invited from scholars in and around the field of STS. Thus far, we anticipate contributions concerning such diverse topics as: election systems, media publics, participatory processes in renewable energy projects, algorithmic diplomacy, and Max Weber’s potential significance for STS. We strongly encourage further contributions, also from early career scholars. We furthermore hope to welcome scholars from a wide array of European countries. Accepted participants will be invited to Copenhagen to spend two days presenting and discussing each others’ drafts/short chapters. In 2018, there will be a new invitation issued to submit revised/full chapters for peer review, and the anthology will then be submitted to an international academic publisher.

The workshop is sponsored by The European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (The Annual EASST Fund); Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University; Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School.

Lunch, refreshments and a dinner will be provided. We may have a very limited amount of funding available to help participants with travel costs. Please let us know in your abstract submission if you require such help, and we will try to make ends meet as best we can.